| ON BIENNIAL |
| THEME |
| ARTISTS |
| INSTALLATION VIEW |
| PANEL DISCUSSION |
2nd BIENNIAL OF QUADRILATERAL BQ_2
We fulfil Your desires! Having spent a lot of time pondering over the differences between a common and a culture hero, I came to the conclusion that, in case I keep the broad concept of culture in view, there aren’t any. For, as a matter of fact, from this perspective, the personalities and deeds of real historical characters or politicians have cultural aspects just as much as the heroes of middle-age and modern legends and sagas. Each age has its heroes, from time to time brought to life by a similar phenomenon. This phenomenon is engendered by a man's feeling that his abilities are limited and the possibilities for changing his destiny are restricted; “he realizes that he is incapable of achieving what he desires, and therefore he must prefigure an Other (who possesses to an optimum degree what he most desires), to which Other he entrusts the task of filling the immense void that separates his desires from his opportunities.” The modern-day equivalent of these unfulfilled desires and the heroes created by them, as well as the embodiment of a collective will and social ideals, is the star, who is no more a king or a knight or a soldier, just a musician or an actor, that is, a “common man”, who represents a refuge for the rest of the “common men”. “Everything people lack in everyday life is concentrated in them: wealth, power, beauty, talent, and a significant life full of pleasure, excitement and celestial harmony. The fullness of life. Ultimately, a life that even triumphs over death.” Each age projects its own conditions into its heroes, and since it expects a solution for its own problems, most often it selects contemporaneous people with extraordinary abilities for the role. As a result, each social stratum has its own stars, who endeavour to compensate various deficiencies. “A star, as Al Capone declared about himself, is a thought sprung from the minds of millions – a precise impersonator of public sentiment”, writes aesthetician Péter György in one of his frequently quoted essays, and continues thus: “The variation of distinct star types provides information on the tendencies of social needs and the nature of uneasiness. (…) The hero of the time, the star, is therefore a two-faced being, a creature and a creator, of an inherently Protean nature, since it can be understood and identified in a matter of moments. That is, the star is unforgettable. Nevertheless, even infinite patience cannot describe it, and it almost completely resists definition. The star cult is among the most important phenomena of the religious syncretism of the 20th century, along with the cult of health, dance craze, body building, vegetarianism and astrology.” The star cult is a religion of the consumer society, a contemporary equivalent of the personality cult familiar from oppressive regimes. The hippest dwellers of today’s profane Olympus may in fact be worshipped into divine status, insofar as their fans attribute magic power to their personal objects or regard their graves as the places of pilgrimage. By today, heroes endowed with exclusively positive characteristics have become obsolete, which is the result of fact that the star-producing mechanism of contemporary culture has a certain profane aspect to it. Heroes of our time, however much they may rise above our “mortal” world, are, in the final analysis, just human beings and, as such, they make errors. True, their strong characters make us forget, perhaps even pardon, their flaws and fiascos. Gábor Bakos and Imre Weber have been making “wishes come true” since 1999. The images of the photo series are, however, not the fulfilments of their own desires, but those of the “models” selected by the artists. The series is based on a close cooperation of creators and customers, strictly keeping to a predefined working process. The initial drafts are outlined after a conversation with the selected person. Each conversation begins with a question: “If you could have a wish come true – it could be anything – what would it be? Based on your answer, we’d like to represent you in your wish come true.” The completed work of art is based on a sort of role-play game in which the parties take turns in acting as a customer or a service provider. The artists enthusiastically and playfully pick from an ample range of the modes of expression used in the media every day. Their desirous subjects appear in the illusionist world of Hollywood movie posters, newspaper articles, comics or fashion magazine pages. Indeed, where else do we encounter such a range of visual resources that would be so perfectly able to efface the transition between reality and fiction? In possession of this trick, the artists are able to conjure up a perfect illusion of the fulfilment of desire. The heroes of the imaginary images are common people, whose desires may be familiar to any of us. The impact of the Desire Images springs from the realisation that the desires which we concentrate in the heroes of our time, and that we believe unattainable are, in fact, easy to accomplish once we emerge from the rational world of the quotidian. In this interpretation, the message of the Desire Images is almost awkwardly optimistic. Owing to the suggestive imagery of fulfilled desires, the spectator readily abandons inquiring into the authenticity of the images and enters the game, for the opportunity offered to enter the virtual, parallel reality of desires is much more intriguing than the verification of the reality of the images. “No matter how startling, you can be a star my darling; no matter how startling, everyone’s a star my darling!” sings the Hobo Blues Band, whose front man is a star himself, even if only in the Carpathian Basin. This is a fate allotted to the founding members of the Hungarian Two-tailed Dog Party (HTDP), which burst into public consciousness in the nerve-racking and unbearable campaign period preceding the 2006 parliamentary elections. However, the group, which is based in Szeged and present countrywide, is not a registered political party. Their choice of name refers to the essence of their activity, which is, on the one hand, focused on mocking the political parties and their empty campaign promises. On the other hand, they are waging a guerrilla war against the overwhelming multitude of advertisements that overgrow our living spaces in service of the consumer society. Their posters, stickers, flyers, traffic signs and public interventions address common people in a common language that can be easily comprehended by anyone. Their witty and ironic public actions of ceaseless energy and, owing to the theme, boundless material, endeavour to distract us from our daily routine. Another merit of the HTDP is that they delineate an alternative to our world, which is made up of prohibitions and rules of game, determined by decision makers, lacking social consensus. An alternative world, where self-organizing, civilian social initiatives and the ideas they represent are constituents of a democratic system. Emese Benczúr’s installation "Be touched" would incite us to touch it even if at first we didn’t notice the letters shaved in the pink fur. A soft and saggy surface of a lounge invites us to recline, absorbed in thought. We may ponder over the sentence propounded by the artist, in a meditative manner so typical of her works. While in her earlier work, a simple sentence in the focus of an installation becomes ingrained in our mind through monotonous repetition, here, the monumental magnification of the text unavoidably confronts us with the message. The materials she uses in her works are capable of intensifying the meaning of the message, thus inseparably binding text and texture. The vivid colours typical of Benczúr, her installations made of sparkling lamps, remind us of the techniques employed in advertising for attracting maximal attention. Nevertheless, the carefully selected materials and the infinite patience with which they are moulded, give proof of an opposite approach. The suggestive significance of Benczúr’s sentences is perplexing, for enunciations of such wisdom would rather be attributed to an enlightened master or a hero of social impact. “Be touched,” whispers the lounge and we expect some transcendent creature’s spirit to brush our skin. All of a sudden, however, we are stirred up by the realisation that we have been clutching six metres of pink fake fur, which, although perhaps recalling childhood memories, is bound to force us back into reality. From another aspect, returning to the theme of culture hero, this pink whatnot, lying there in the room, inviting us to touch it, revives a cult of magic relics, or, to give a contemporary example, a cult of the useless gadgets of Hollywood stars, auctioned for immense sums. The fourth Hungarian work exhibited at this year’s Biennial in Rijeka relates to this latter meaning of the notion of stardom. Hajnal Németh and István Majoros’s "MC Monument" is a memento of some personalities coming from a certain music and club culture in Berlin. Today’s MCs (Master of Ceremony) are performers of a critical, underground branch of metropolitan music culture; representatives, identityforming artists of a certain subculture. The full body sculptures of five MCs atop the loudspeakers are the emblems of complexity and colourfulness of Berlin, the heart of European culture. The sketchy wax moulding is a consciously employed tool, since the focus of this work is not a depiction of given personalities, but of the collective significance of the sculpture group. Serving as pedestals, each loudspeaker also transmits a voice of an MC, and since they take turns in rapping, the spatially distributed voices unite into a homogeneous piece of music. The installation includes a 20 minute musical documentary, "Forever Thursday", which, besides giving an insight in the studio recording for the installation, features the MCs talking and singing about themselves - where they come from, who they are, what their “famous names” are - or just commenting the events. The act of placing the contemporary music trend and microphone cult of a city on a pedestal follows the tradition of erecting monuments in Hungary (of internationally record-setting quantities – but, unfortunately, not qualities). Nevertheless, by sculpting an alternative segment of metropolitan culture instead of eminent statesmen, they present us with a contemporary alternative of the genre. Rita Kálmán
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Grad Rijeka,
Odjel gradske uprave za kulturu
Ministry Of Culture of the Republic of Croatia,
Primorsko-goranska County